Count Tolstoy at Home

“What, then, in your
opinion, should a woman who has missed that fate do?”

I was interested in his
reply, because six months earlier he had advised me to marry. I inquired what
answer he intended to send,—that is, if he meant to reply at all. He said
that he considered the letter of sufficient importance to merit an answer, and
that he should tell her that “every woman who had not married, whatever
the reason, ought to impose upon herself the hardest cross which she could
devise, and bear it.”

“And so punish herself
for the fault of others, perhaps?” I asked. “No. If your
correspondent is a woman of sufficient spirit to impose that cross, she will
also have sufficient spirit to retort that very few of us choose our own
crosses; and that women’s crosses imposed by Fate, Providence, or, whatever one
pleases to call it, are generally heavier, more cruel, than any which they
could imagine for themselves in the maddest ecstasy of pain-worship. Are the
Shaker women, of whom you approve, also to invent crosses? And how about the
Shaker men? What is their duty in the matter of invoking suffering?”

He made no reply, except
that “non-marriage was the ideal state,” and then relapsed into
silence, as was his habit when he did not intend to relinquish his idea.
Nevertheless I am convinced that he is always open to the influence quite
unconsciously, of course—of argument from any quarter. His changes of belief
prove it.

These remarks about the
Shakers seemed to indicate that another change was imminent; and as the history
of his progress through the links of his chain of reasoning was a subject of
the greatest interest to me, I asked his wife for it. It cannot be called anything
but a linked progress, since the germs—nay, the nearly full-fledged idea—of
his present moral and religious attitude can be found in almost all of his
writings from the very beginning.

When the count married, he
had attained to that familiar stage in the spiritual life where men have
forgotten, or outgrown, or thoroughly neglected for a long time the religious
instruction inculcated upon them in theft childhood. There is no doubt that the
count had been well grounded in religious tenets and ceremonies; the Russian
church is particular on this point, and examinations in “the law of
God” form part of the conditions for entrance to the state schools. But,
having reached the point where religion has no longer any solid grasp upon a
man, he did not like to see other people observe even the forms.

Later on he began a novel,
to be called The Decembrists. The Decembrists is the name given to the
participants in the disorders of 1825, on the accession of the Emperor Nicholas
I to the throne. Among the preparations which he made for this work were
excursions taken with the object of acquainting himself with the divers
dialects and peculiarities of expression current in the different parts of the
empire. These he collected from pilgrims on the highways and byways.

“A pilgrim,” said
the witty countess, “is a man who has grown tired of the jars and the
cares and responsibilities of the household; out of patience with the family in
general. He feels the necessity, inborn in every Russian, for roaming, for getting
far away from people, into the country and the forests. So he makes a
pilgrimage to some distant shrine. I should like to be a pilgrim myself, but
the family ties me down. I feel the need of freshening up my ideas.”

In these excursions the
count came to see how great a part religion plays in the life of the lower
classes; and he argued that, in order to get into sympathy with them, one must
share their ideas as to religion. Accordingly he plunged into it with his
customary ardor;—“he has a passionate nature,”—and for several
years he attended every church service, observed every rite, kept every fast, and
so on. He thought it horrible if those about him did not do the same,—if they
neglected a single form. I think it quite probable that he initiated the
trouble with his stomach by these fasts. They are nothing to a person who has
always been used to them; but when we consider that the longer fasts cover
about four solid months, not to mention the usual abstinence on Wednesdays and
Fridays and the special abstinences,—and that milk, eggs, cheese, and butter
are prohibited, as well as other customary articles of food, it is not difficult
to imagine the effect of sudden and strict observance upon a man accustomed
during the greater part of his life to a meat diet. The vegetable diet in which
he now persists only aggravates the evil in one who is afflicted with liver
trouble, and who is too old to train his vital economy in fresh paths.

His religious ardor lasted
until he went to church one day, during the last Russo-Turkish war, when
prayers were offered for the success of the Russian army. It suddenly struck
him that it as inconsistent with “Love your enemies,” “Love one
another,” “Do not kill,” that prayers should be offered for the
death of enemies. From that day forth he ceased to go to church, as he had also
perceived that the practice of religious forms did not, in reality, bring him
much nearer to the peasants, and that one must live among them, work among
them, to appreciate their point of view.

The only surprising thing
about this was that he should never have noticed that the army is prayed for,
essentially in the same sense, at every church service. After the petitions for
the Emporer and the imperial family, the liturgy proceeds, “And we pray
for the army, that Thou wilt assist Them” (that is, be imperial family and
its army), “and subdue all foes and enemies under Their feet.”
Perhaps these familiar words came home to him with special force on that
particular day, as familiar words sometimes do. Possibly it was a special
prayer. In any case, the prayer was strictly logical. If you have an army, pray
for it; and the only prayer that can be offered is, obviously, not for its
defeat. That would be tantamount to praying for the enemy; which might be
Scriptural, in one way, but would be neither natural, popular, nor further
removed from objections of murder than the other.

But Count Tolstóy was
logical, also, in another way. Once started on this train of thought, most
worldly institutions of the present day, beginning with the army, appeared to
him opposed to the teaching of Christ, on which point no rational man will
differ from him. As to the possibility of living the life of Christ, or even
the advisability of trying it, at this period of the world, that is quite
another matter.

It is not necessary for me
to recapitulate here that which all the world knows already,—the minute
details of his belief in personal poverty, labor, the renunciation of art and
science, and so forth. We discussed them. But I neglected my opportunities to
worry him with demands for his catechism, which his visitors delight in
grinding out of him as though from a machine, when the reading public must be
sufficiently informed on that score already. I have endeavored to set down only
the special illustrations of his doctrines, out of the rich mass of his
conversation.

Those who have perused
attentively his earlier works will have perceived that there is really very
little that is absolutely new in these doctrines. They are so strictly the
development of ideas which are an integral part of him, through heredity,
environment, and personal bias, that the only surprise would be that he should
not have ended in this way. Community of goods, mutual help, and kindred
doctrines are the national birthright of every Russian, often bartered, it is
true. But long residence in the country among the peasants who do not preach
these doctrines, but simply practice them, naturally affected the thoughtful
student of humanity though he was of a different rank. He began to announce his
theories to the world, and found followers, as teachers of these views
generally do,—a proof that they satisfy an instinct in the human breast.
Solitary country life anywhere is productive of such views.

Disciples, or
“adepts,” began to make pilgrimages to the prophet. There is a
characteristic, a highly characteristic history of one such who came and
established himself in the village at the count’s park gate.

“This F. was a Jew,
who did not finish his studies, got led astray by socialists, and joined a
community where, like the other members, he lived out of marriage with a young
girl student. At last he came across a treatise of Lyeff Nikoláevitch, and
decided that he was wrong and Lyeff Nikoláevitch right. He removed to Yásnaya
Polyána, married his former mistress, and began to live and work among the
peasants.” (He first joined the Russian church, and one of the count’s
daughters stood godmother for him.) “His wife worked also; but, with
delicate health and two small children to care for, she could do little,
through weakness and lack of skill. The peasants laughed at him and at Lyeff Nikoláevitch.”